He cares little that the earnest world of hockey has trouble looking past his various tattoos and colorful wardrobe, or the fact that he missed a flight to a playoff game after crashing his Hummer, or the fact that he drives a Hummer at all in this most Chevrolet of sports.
All of that has overshadowed the not-so-small detail that Emery, 24, has led the Ottawa Senators to the Stanley Cup finals in his first season as a full-time starter. The best-of-seven Cup series between Ottawa and the Ducks opens Monday in Anaheim, Calif.
“I really could care less what people say or think,” Emery said. “I like winning and I like playing the game. It’s exciting for me and the team and all my family and friends who are watching. That’s all I care about.”

Good morning all. Finals start tonite and I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am. I've been considering this matchup for a week and provide you today with an in-depth analysis. Feel free to add your own, but don't embarrass yourselves. If yours doesn't compare to mine both in depth and seriousness of thought, don't post it. This is no place for half-assedness.
Sens in six. Please.
A few changes to the port sidebar. I've begun compiling a series of rants that will serve as the 2007 Season in Review. You'll find it under the heading "Reviewing 2007: Sarcasm for the Sarcastic." About halfway done. The rest should be complete within 48 or so.
There are also a few subtle modifications to the blogroll: I've added the Wing blog Yzerman Is God to the "Head to Hockeytown" section and Spector's has changed URL's. Find the new one here.
Enjoy your Memorial Day, and please take a few to remember the reason most of us aren't working today.

Count Lemaire among those who will be glued to the television during the Finals. Currently relaxing at his place in Florida, Lemaire has been enthralled by the entire playoffs. He says he has noticed a pattern that likely will alter the NHL landscape a bit next season.
“Looking at where the league is going, it’s going to be a little more aggressive,” he said. “We went the other way for a while. The hitting was there. Now, it’s a little more than that. You see the scrums after the play. They’re pushing, fighting more.
“Every team will try that. Especially now that they see Anaheim doing so well. Everyone is talking about them. Everyone will take that road.”
Successful strategies always have been copied. Lemaire should know. There isn’t a team in the league that doesn’t use a trap. If something works, everybody wants in.

Having a nifty holiday weekend. Looking forward to going into DC tomorrow and actually visiting the memorials of some fallenheroes. It is, after all, Memorial Day, in case some of us have forgotten that.

But that’s not my point tonite. Nope. As stated, the weekend was going well until an A2Y reader sent met this article…and now I wouldn’t mind throwing up in mass quantities. Overall, it’s not a bad read. But a few lines stick out that make me curdle.

In an era when other sports have never received more exposure, talk-show hosts around the country all but ban themselves from mentioning hockey, fearing that it will be an invitation for listeners to pop in a CD or change stations. Even hosts who like the game have to pretend they are too cool for the room and ridicule the sport.
I’m sick of listening to it. I don’t care if hockey’s not popular. I will watch the Stanley Cup finals and I believe the unknown cable network — Versus — has done an outstanding job of giving hockey fans what they want.

How did Anaheim become the under-ducks in this series?
“A lot of the Canadian media are going to pick the Canadian team and that’s fine,” answered Ducks general manager Brian Burke, who knows something about how the Canadian media operates, from his days running the Vancouver Canucks. “We have more Canadians on our team than Ottawa does. That’s fine. We’re content to be the underdog in this and it’s clear to us that we are. We like our team and we’re happy with our group.
“We’re happy to be here.”

The team is representing the nation’s capital in the Stanley Cup final, but there will be fans all across the country cheering against them during Monday night’s series opener.
Just ask Michael Fox, a self-described “big-time” Toronto Maple Leafs fan who said he’ll be rooting for the Ducks all the way.
“If it were the Leafs in the final, they’d be cheering against us right to the bitter end,” he said of Senators fans while lunching at Wayne Gretzky’s bar in Toronto. “They’d probably show up at the game and cheer against us just out of spite, so I have my reasons to cheer for the Ducks.”
Fox said he doesn’t buy into the notion of the Sens as “Canada’s team.”

When Scott Niedermayer hoists the Stanley Cup following Game 5 a week from Wednesday night, it will culminate what was almost predestined with the events of last July 3.
Anaheim will be the first team in the Pacific time zone to win the Cup since it was awarded to the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League for their 1925 conquest of the Montreal Canadiens.
California will boast an NHL champion for the first time….
And it will be thanks to the bold yet confident move made by Ducks general manager Brian Burke, who wasn’t afraid to part with a bushel of riches to acquire defenseman Chris Pronger from Edmonton.

Question: What would be the best California song to set the stage for an Anaheim Ducks-Ottawa Senators’ showdown? Every year, before the Stanley Cup final opens, I burn a disc of songs to play in the rent-a-car stereo on the drive to and from the airports and the arenas – and here, where it takes 45 minutes on a good day with no traffic to get from LAX and Orange County and even longer to get to the beaches (must find Ducks fever somewhere!), it’s even more important to have a good, scene-setting musical compilation.

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